Virtual pedestrians pave way to safer roads for driverless cars

A mini version of New York - in Sweden - helping the auto industry perfect autonomous cars.

ASTAZERO CEO, PETER JANEVIK, SAYING: "We have four test environments: one city, rural road or countryside road, the very flexible open high-speed area and then there's a few stretches of high-way as well and those are the typical situations that you want to master when going towards self-driving.

This is unique." Customers including Volvo have bet big on the race to get rid of the driver - and make motoring safer ZENUITY CEO, DENNIS NOBELIUS, SAYING: "We solved three problems. We solved the traffic jam problem, we solved the commute problem and we solved the parking problem.

We believe that those three are the pain points for, you know, normal driving or customers today.

So we take them one by one, solve them one hundred per cent and release them to the customer." Automakers are treading carefully after a fatal crash upended Uber's self-driving car programme But they are still in the race and 5G will help pick up the pace ERICSSON MANAGER OF CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT, MAGNUS CASTELL SAYING: "We'll also see, I guess, autonomously driven vehicles like the Einride car going long haul from point to point between the logistics hubs you can say.

So that's also a thing where we'll see a great future.

But of course all of this is requiring good solid connectivity, or reliable connectivity, to share information, so you can take proper decisions on the way as you go." Test tracks like this will help developers understand behavioural and city planning data - in turn resulting in better tests for the cars.

So, they may be slow, but self driving cars are still coming, cautiously.